What should we say to the visiting English cricketers?

Mar 19, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In times like these when important foreign people are in Guyana, the ruling politicians get nervous about the private media. Of course the familiar saying comes into play; “Do nothing, fear nothing.” The political elites put on their best show for the visiting dignitaries.
They get mad when the private media describes the primitive physical infrastructure, the backward policies and the uninspiring social climate. We, in the private media are supposed to put on our elegant nationalist costumes.
You don’t mind doing that if the ruling elites would acknowledge that patriotism is a two-way street. The media will play its part in showcasing the country. The rulers, on the other hand, would listen to the media when it discovers and write about wrong-doing.
We do not have such kinds of governors in Guyana. Certainly not the PPP! (for those who are in Guyana for the first time, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is the ruling party.).
The psychotic failure of the PPP is that it carries this “messianic” torch about its superhuman greatness that it is history’s embodiment so ordinary mortals will never catch up with it. It reminds me of a line in that fantastic song of the sixties, MacArthur Park
“Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance.”
The PPP and its leaders are one step ahead and the Guyanese people will have to follow it. The PPP will always be one step ahead. The Guyanese people will always lag behind the great, historic PPP. This has been the madness with which the PPP was born. It undid PPP leaders in the sixties. It undid Cheddi Jagan to the point that he didn’t live long enough to enjoy power. It undid Janet Jagan in that she got too feeble to sustain the power she got. It is undoing the PPP at the moment.
The PPP sees itself as a phenomenon that stands above all else. Psychologically it cannot begin to understand the meaning of compromise, accommodation and give-and-take. The PPP must dictate the pace.
The media hide the sordid side of Guyana while the English cricketers are here and when the cricket is over, what do you get? You get the fantastic PPP, the historic PPP, the great PPP that will tell you that such nationalist display was obligatory on your part. But never will there be a reciprocal obligation on the part of the PPP.
The media, civil society, and major stakeholders welcome the English cricketers and say the loveliest things about this territory and you will be lectured to by the PPP that such an attitude was the right thing to show. Don’t ever dare tell the PPP what are the right things in the exercise of power.
One must understand the context of Kwame Mc Coy as one of the Guyana Government’s representatives on the Rights of the Child Commission. No thought was ever given to Mc Coy’s suitability for one fundamental reason – the PPP is right; the PPP does the right thing, so what is wrong about Mc Coy’s representation?
The PPP cannot and will not see the ineligibility of Mc Coy sitting on the Rights of the Child Commission because of its congenital “messianic” aura. The PPP cannot and will see that in any kind of politics, obligation rests with both sides, with all sides and not just the citizenry.
Obsessed with the teaching of Karl Marx, PPP leaders from Janet and Cheddi Jagan right down to the present cabal, have never ever perused a text on obligation in the social contract. It may be too late for Janet Jagan but the current crop of leaders should be forced to read Plato, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke and Rawls.
These are brilliant thinkers who describe with philosophical greatness how the concept of obligation works. Poor Winston Murray and Clive Thomas! They both went to the Convention Centre and endorsed Bharrat Jagdeo’s ranting against the EPA. They both felt it was their obligation.
This was in September 2008. That makes it half of a calendar year since these two eminent gentlemen – one an admired opposition parliamentarian, the other a distinguished Caribbean scholar – have shown their obligation to their President and his party, the PPP. The obligation from the other side isn’t coming, though.
In fact, so frustrated is Professor Thomas that he has gone back to his anti-government carping.
So what do we, in the media, tell the visiting English cricketers about Guyana, its democracy, its government? What should be our obligation? To the Government of Guyana or to the truth?

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What should we say to the visiting English cricketers?

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